Carl von Clausewitz - War Quotes

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Politics is the womb in which war develops—where its outlines already exist in their hidden rudimentary form, like the characteristics of living creatures in their embryos.

Carl von Clausewitz
War is not an exercise of the will directed at an inanimate matter.

Carl von Clausewitz
I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

Carl von Clausewitz
War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

Carl von Clausewitz
War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.

Carl von Clausewitz
War is an act of force, and to the application of that force there is no limit. Each of the adversaries forces the hand of the other, and a reciprocal action results which in theory can have no limit....

Carl von Clausewitz
The invention of gunpowder and the constant improvement of firearms are enough in themselves to show that the advance of civilization has done nothing practical to alter or deflect the impulse to destroy the enemy, which is central to the very idea of war.

Carl von Clausewitz
Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen war.

Carl von Clausewitz
Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance.

Carl von Clausewitz
... in war, the advantages and disadvantages of a single action could only be determined by the final balance.

Carl von Clausewitz
All war presupposes human weakness and seeks to exploit it.

Carl von Clausewitz
War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds.

Carl von Clausewitz
Our discussion has shown that while in war many different roads can lead to the goal, to the attainment of the political object, fighting is the only possible means.

Carl von Clausewitz
War is the realm of uncertainty; three-quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.... war is the realm of chance. No other human activity gives it greater scope; no other has such incessant and varied dealings with this intruder. Chance makes everything more uncertain and interferes with the whole course of events.

Carl von Clausewitz
Modern wars are seldom fought without hatred between nations; this serves more or less as a substitute for hatred between individuals.

Carl von Clausewitz
Where execution is dominant, as it is in the individual events of a war whether great or small, then intellectual factors are reduced to a minimum.

Carl von Clausewitz
The deduction of effect from cause is often blocked by some insuperable extrinsic obstacle: the true causes may be quite unknown. Nowhere in life is this so common as in war, where the facts are seldom fully known and the underlying motives even less so.

Carl von Clausewitz
War Is Merely the Continuation of Policy by Other Means
We see, therefore, that war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means. What remains peculiar to war is simply the peculiar nature of its means.

Carl von Clausewitz
Surprise becomes effective when we suddenly face the enemy at one point with far more troops than he expected. This type of numerical superiority is quite distinct from numerical superiority in general: it is the most powerful medium in the art of war.

Carl von Clausewitz
War should never be thought of as something autonomous, but always as an instrument of policy.

Carl von Clausewitz
To discover how much of our resources must be mobilized for war, we must first examine our political aim and that of the enemy. We must gauge the strength and situation of the opposite state. We must gauge the character and abilities of its government and people and do the same in regard to our own. Finally, we must evaluate the political sympathies of other states and the effect the war may have on them.

Carl von Clausewitz
In 1793 such a force as no one had any conception of made its appearance. War had again suddenly become an affair of the people, and that of a people numbering thirty millions, every one of whom regarded himself as a citizen of the State... By this participation of the people in the war... a whole Nation with its natural weight came into the scale.

Carl von Clausewitz
If we do not learn to regard a war, and the separate campaigns of which it is composed, as a chain of linked engagements each leading to the next, but instead succumb to the idea that the capture of certain geographical points or the seizure of undefended provinces are of value in themselves, we are liable to regard them as windfall profits. In so doing, and in ignoring the fact that they are links in a continuous chain of events, we also ignore the possibility that their possession may later lead to definite disadvantages.

Carl von Clausewitz
Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: war is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst.

Carl von Clausewitz
War is the province of chance. in no other sphere of human activity must such a margin be left for this intruder. it increases the uncertainty of every circumstance and deranges the course of events.

Carl von Clausewitz
Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war.... Countless minor incidents - the kind you can never really foresee - combine to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls short of the intended goal....

Carl von Clausewitz
In war, where imperfect intelligence, the threat of a catastrophe, and the number of accidents are incomparably greater than any other human endeavor, the amount of missed opportunities, so to speak, is therefore bound to be greater.

Carl von Clausewitz
War is a conflict of great interests which is settled by bloodshed, and only in that is it different from others.

Carl von Clausewitz
In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.

Carl von Clausewitz
We shall not enter into any of the abstruse definitions of war used by publicists. We shall keep to the element of the thing itself, to a duel. War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale.

Carl von Clausewitz